Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Howdy folks and a belated Happy New Year to everybody reading. Been a bit quiet round these parts lately, due to A) my laptop packing it in before christmas and taking me an age to get repaired, B) complete and utter burn-out following the completion of my head-melting "Party Crash!" (which, I am happy to report seemed to go down pretty well with the good folk over at the 2000ad forums and has notched up an impressive 2000 page views since going live in December) and C) an extended stay over Christmas/New Year in my spiritual second home, Tokyo, during which little in the way of any new writing was done but fanciful plans were hatched and intriguing ideas were set in motion. It's 2011, baby, and it's gonna be good!

I have a few projects on the go but can't talk about some of them, as they are all in the early stages of production. I find that spilling the beans on things too soon can release the magic from them, scattering it to the four corners of the internet from which it can seldom be reclaimed, so hush hush is the name of the game. What I can do is give you an update on a couple of things. First and foremost:

Speed Kills (aka Speed Date the Movie) is complete! That is to say, the FILMING is complete. There is still the small matter of editing, adding a score, attaching credits, etc etc, but with the shooting of the exterior shots at the start of January, everything is now in the can and post-production can begin in earnest. Not long now. Tucker is coming! And this is how he travels:

Dr.WTF?! is getting perilously close to completion and is almost ready to be unleashed upon the world. That old crazy fox Owen Watts has been doing sterling work at the helm of this particular project, taking it safely from the land of Conceptopia across the hazardous seas to Comiconica, the land of the rising comic. My project "Chronoleech" with Mitahane, is developing nicely and features glorious time-warped panels such as this:

And here's the pic Mitahane put together as a "teaser" image for the story:

More info and teaser images can be found on the new Facebook page Owen set up to promote the comic.

I posted the cover image for Paragon 7 a few months back. That issue should be coming out soon, featuring the first episode of my first ongoing series, Icarus Dangerous. There's been a slight change to the artistic arrangements for this strip and regular Paragon contributor (and artist on that title's supercool strip "Battle Ganesh") Stephen Prestwood will now be providing the sumptious visuals to illustrate my wordage. Really excited about this, I will be posting some teaser images as and when I am allowed to!

Another project in the works is a new noir/pulp-fiction type webcomic that harkens back to the old pulp comics of yore. The brainchild of one Chris Cronin, it will feature lots of hardboiled detectives, dames in distress, and shady hoodlums, alongside a smattering of horror and adventure stories. I will be providing a short horror tale for this comic, a troubling tale that goes under the title "Weep". It will hopefully give you some interesting nightmares and make you look at something common to us all in a very different light. Art on this strip will be by Filip Roncone, who I collaborate with on Promise for Hallowscream last year.

I have also had a script accepted by Futurequake, though this one is probably a little bit on the horizon. It was really good working with the editors of the magazine, who gave me some good advice on scripting structure and enabled me to work on tightening up my scripts. The process took a few months but by the end of it the script for this particular story, "Five Minutes to Midnight" had changed dramatically from the initial draft and was a much, much stronger story as a result. I have no idea if an artist has been allocated to this strip or not yet, but rest assured I will be back with a progress report as and when I have one. This is my highest profile gig to date and I am really looking forward to see the completed story in print.

That's about all I can really talk about. I do have another BIG project in the works but its far too early to talk about it, as I said at the start. Rather than say anything, I will instead leave you with some teaser images...more details on all of these and what they are about later! Top 2 images below are by David Blankley, bottom two are by Louis Carter.

About Me

Van Dom is a comics writer who has contributed to publications such as Futurequake, Zarjaz, Dogbreath, Something Wicked, Back from the Depths' Hallowscream, Temple APA, Tales from the Emerald Isle, AAAIEEEEE!! and Paragon (where popular ongoing series "Icarus Dangerous" appears). His work has also featured in Paragon's "Jikan Collection volume 2". Dirk also publishes his own anthology comic, "Vanguard", the first two issues of which are now available with the 3rd in production.